Deer Luhan,

I think this has to have been my most nerve-wracking New Year’s Day ever.  Traumatised terror from beginning to end.  It was like being on an emotional rollercoaster.

Leigh

Xiumin found me wrapped in my duvet in a shivering heap in the practice room the next morning.

“What are you doing here?” he demanded.  “Have you slept?”

I shook my head: I’d been there the entire night.  Even an emergency call to Luhan hadn’t calmed me down enough to go back to bed.

He sat down beside me and tried to unwrap the duvet.  I clung onto it with a whimper.

“Leigh,” he said, “what’s wrong?  Come on, tell me.”

“I… I-I…” I stuttered, and then buried my head in the duvet.  “Xiumin, I think Chen knows!  What do I do?”

“W-what?”  He tugged on the duvet again.  “Wait, Leigh, sit up and tell me.  What happened?”

Gulping, I lifted my head, but I avoided meeting his eye.

“I was putting him to bed because he wasn’t in a fit condition to do it himself and he was refusing to get undressed so I got annoyed and told him to strip because we were both men and he challenged me and I thought he was just saying that because he was drunk but he actually meant it and he saw!” I forced out in one breath.

Xiumin looked alarmed.  I buried my head back in the duvet with a squeak.

“He actually forced to you strip?!”

I tilted my head from one side to the other.  “He got my shirt off and he….”  I started crying.

Apparently, stopping there didn’t give off the best of impressions, because Xiumin swore – and Xiumin virtually never swore – and got to his feet.

I lifted my head again.  “W-where are you going?”

“To beat him up,” he said.  “What the hell did he do to you?”

Realisation hit me and I uncurled, letting the duvet drop.  “He was too drunk to actually do anything bad!” I exclaimed quickly, and it came out as a croak.  “He just saw the chest compressor, opened it, closed it again, said I was a girl and passed out.”

Xiumin paused and then sat back down again.  “You’re sure?”

Sniffing, I rubbed my nose and nodded.  “I’m sure.  I was sober by then.”

Xiumin tapped his chin.  “You know, if he was really that drunk, it’s possible he might not remember anything.”

As luck would have it, the door to the practice room opened at that moment and Chen came in.  Clapping my hand over my mouth, I shot to my feet.  Xiumin got up more slowly, looking from me to Chen, and Chen tilted his head quizzically to one side, hair mussed up at the back and sticking on end.

“Xiumin hyung,” he croaked out in Korean, sounding a lot worse than he looked, “is it okay if I speak to Luhan privately for a—”

I made my escape too quickly for either of them to catch me, slamming the door shut and sprinting out of the studio.  From the look on Chen’s face, I’d been unlucky and he had remembered.  Xiumin could deal with that, because I sure as hell wasn’t in a state to explain myself yet again.

Lay was awake when I got back to our room and locked the door behind me.

“Morning,” I told him shakily as I flung my duvet onto my bed and quickly climbed into the closet.  “If Chen asks, I’m not here.”

“Ugh.  Too loud,” he complained, pressing his hands to his temples.  “You sound like death trampled over you.”

 “You look like death trampled over you.”  I stuck my tongue out and hastily shut the closet door.

“I’m hung over!” he protested before it finally hit him.  “Wait!  Your voice is back!”

There was a tentative knock on the bedroom door.  I opened the closet quickly to glare at Lay.

“I’m not here!”

Even in his hung over state, he still looked amused as I closed the door again.

The knock came a second time.

“Gege.”  It was Chen’s voice.  “Is LuLu there?  I need to speak to him.”

“No,” Lay called out.  “He hasn’t been back all night.  Go away.  My head hurts.”

To my absolute horror, I heard the lock click open and the door creaked.  Needing to see what was going on, I inched the closet door open and peeked through the tiny sliver.  Chen was pocketing a small hammer and a delicate chisel.

“Liar.  His duvet’s here and I heard you talking to somebody.  Where did he go?”

Lay pulled his duvet back up over his head.  “Dunno.  Please go away.  The passage light is too loud.”

“I need to talk to him,” Chen insisted.  “Where is he?  I know he hasn’t left the dorm because I saw him coming in.”

Lay groaned.

“I’ll sing,” Chen threatened.  “It’ll kill me as much as you, d*mm*t, but I swear to God I’ll sing if you don’t tell me.”

Lay groaned again.  “Closet.”

.

I scrambled further back, hoping to hide myself behind Luhan’s hanging jackets, but at that moment, the closet door was flung open.

“Boo,” said Chen in monotone.  “Hyung, I’m not in the mood to play games.  Please come out.  I need to talk to you.”

“No Korean in the dorm,” Lay mumbled, rolling over.

“Like anybody’s in a fit condition to wash my mouth out,” Chen muttered.  “For God’s sake, I know you’re in there: I can see your feet.  Please come out.  My head hurts.”

I reluctantly parted two jackets to look at him.  He was pouting and scratching the back of his head.

Don’t give in to the cuteness; don’t give in to the cuteness….  But I found myself sliding forwards, and then I tumbled out of the closet into his arms and we both landed on the floor.

“Sehun will be pissed if he sees this,” Lay yawned before pulling his duvet up over his head.  “You’ve found him.  Now get out.”

“Lay, you traitor!”

Chen pushed me off him and got up.  “Wait, you can talk again?  Thank God.”

I didn’t.  Talking meant I’d have to sing at some point, and Luhan finally thought he had a lead on his aunt, so I wasn’t sure the anticipated swap would be happening anytime soon.  It would depend on what he had to do.

I was still dressed from the previous night and Chen had been in day clothes when he came up to find me in the studio, so he ended up dragging me out of the building and to a coffee shop just around the block so that we could talk privately.  It really didn’t inspire me with confidence at all, and by the time our drinks arrived, even though I knew the coffee would help me to function, I was practically gibbering with fear.

Chen at least had the sense to order himself an enormous bottle of water rather than anything caffeinated, and he sat there fiddling with the bottle cap and frowning at the table top as I tried my best to hide my creepy coffee face.

“Do you mind if I speak in Korean?” he asked me.  “My head’s not really up to Chinese at the moment.”

I gave a listless shrug: I didn’t really see how much of a difference it made.

“First of all….”  He sighed and took a sip of water.  “I just wanted to apologise.  I swear I don’t normally get drunk like that – you’ve seen me before.  It was just because of the challenge.  I guess I ought to thank you for taking the number of shots down, because according to Kris I had nearly eighteen units of alcohol, and if you hadn’t taken me home, I probably would have ended up in hospital.  Just… can the forfeit not involve anything alcoholic?”

He looked up at me.  I hid my face by taking another sip of coffee and nodded.

“And about last night,” he went on.  I nearly choked.  This is it.

“What happened?” he asked me.  “Xiumin says I really freaked you out, so I’m guessing that’s why you were trying to hide from me.  But what did I do?  I genui